


Help, Help (I'm Alive)

by Missy



Category: Heathers (1988)
Genre: Aftermath, Angst, College, F/F, Female Friendship, Getting Together, Post-Canon, Trauma Recovery, Yuletide Treat
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-24
Updated: 2015-12-24
Packaged: 2018-05-09 02:48:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,091
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5522588
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Missy/pseuds/Missy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Everyone deals with the aftermath of Westerburg High's implosion - both social and nearly literal -  in a different way. </p><p> Veronica's way just happens to involve making out with her best friend and failing to complete a course in philosophy.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Help, Help (I'm Alive)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Bethynyc](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bethynyc/gifts).



Veronica bought her first Morrisey poster when she moved into the dorm. She told Betty it’s her goodbye to high school life – an aloha to the fucked-up weirdness that was JD, the Heathers, and everything involving those dark days back at Westerberg.

“I’ll look at his chiseled jawline and remember that there are worse things in the world than being miserable.”

Betty told her that that sounded almost noble and Veronica – almost in spite of herself – let out a laugh.

 

***

Veronica was studying mediation. She didn’t know where she’d apply it, or if that meant that she was interested in politics deep down, but after surviving the shark tank of her teenage life she figured that she ought to use the skills she’d developed somehow. The classes were dull, and she often found her mind drifting away in mid-lesson; often imagined herself trying to lead and faltered when she pressed herself to be more honest, more forward, more ‘real’.

‘Real’ was a word often spoken on campus. ‘Genuine’ was a state everyone aspired to project and nobody – not even the most popular kids – seemed to be good at it. But, she decided, at least they were pleasant liars. They were so fake that they were the truest things around.

***

Martha stopped by the dorm every Sunday – she was in school across the state, trying to figure out how to become a collegiate, reinventing herself less successfully than Veronica had. Veronica kept feeding her encouragement over Sunday dinners, dinners occasionally attended by Heather MacNamara, who was studying communications. The atmosphere was weird, but she handled it – popped popcorn, put on a movie, unspooled tape and listened to everyone’s problems. As it turned out, friendship was just that easy without social clique bullshit getting in the way. Who knew?

 

*** 

When her professor asked her how she managed to survive her teenage life, Veronica said she was lucky. Lucky and smart. 

(Betty told her suddenly one night that she was very brave, but that’s a label that Veronica rejected. If she was brave Heather Chandler would be bitching and drinking her way through her freshman year at some party school somewhere, and even JD would be around, breaking hearts and planning transgressive, violent acts).

*** 

 

“I’m thinking of going to Heather’s grave,” she told Betty. The two of them had been playing around with home perms in the hope of nailing a date for next Friday, but whatever plan they’d been making died a horrified death at her words.

“Don’t go back there,” Betty told Veronica. “You should never look back,” she insisted later. “You could be absolutely anything you want, Veronica, don’t be afraid to be weak.”

“But I’m not weak,” insisted Veronica.

In the end, did indeed go to Heather Chandler’s grave once, when she came home for Thanksgiving break. It was meticulously manicured by the girls’ parents, dotted with teddy bear and valentine-red hearts. Veronica thought to herself that it was the grave of a child beauty pageant queen, a pretty plot of land that had nothing to do with who Heather was as a girl. She thought that there ought to be plaid on the stone, and that the inscription should read ‘fuck me gently with a chainsaw’ or some sort of odd, original aphorism that slipped easily from Heather’s lips. 

The woman was a bitch. She didn’t really miss her, but even that bitch deserved better.

*** 

“How do you know when you’re in love?” Betty asked the AOL search engine.

It takes her fifteen minutes to get a Shakespeare quote and a self-help site. She could’ve gotten more useful advice out of a gumball machine.

*** 

Veronica got As in everything but her philosophy class. Her professor claimed she was terrible at original thinking. _Yeah._ She thought to herself. That’s why she let JD do all of the planning and half of the dirty work.

*** 

Betty was a perfect reminder of the person she was trying to be – the person she probably is, or people thought she was if they don’t look too close. Someone open, someone real, someone who gave a fucking shit. The kind of girl who kept her head down and tried to avoid the frat culture that perfumed the campus and tried to avoid the sorority women with their petty cliquishness, who attended Take Back the Night and worked as a student guidance councilor. And Veronica didn’t try to probe too closely or too deeply, either. To maintain her tiny family she would do anything.

*** 

She didn’t know how or why things with Betty began to change, but one night they were alone with a pizza and a copy of Pretty in Pink and they were making fun of Molly Ringwald while stuffing their faces and it just…did. Veronica remembered that they were talking about finals, feeling the pull and ache of the future in their bones, when Betty just leaned across the bed and kissed Veronica square on the lips.

Veronica had absolutely no idea how she felt about this. She didn’t ask her to stop but she doesn’t ask for more from her, either.

“What are we even doing here?” Veronica asked, once Betty pulled back.

“On this planet or in this bed?” Betty said.

“Both,” Veronica said.

“Dealing with the shit of the past by using the shit of the future to rock each other,” said Betty. “Duh.”

Veronica rubbed her temple. “I’m going to fail philosophy. The last thing I need to think about is failing you, too.”

“Veronica – you’re a damn good person, because you really do want everything to be better. Even though you have some major damage and you really need to get the shit with Westerberg go already.” Betty shrugged. “But hey, who isn’t a little messed up? If your philosophy professor can’t see that then he’s got damage of his own.”

“Okay,” Veronica said. “All right.”

“All right?”

“All right.”

Veronica kissed her first, this time.

*** 

 

They took to walking around campus hand-in-hand. And Veronica was surprised by how happy it made her feel, how good it was to be with someone in a healthy way.

 

*** 

She forgot about the red scrunchie’s existence until she cleaned out her dorm room. Even then, she couldn’t quite bring herself to throw it away.

So she tucked it under the picture of herself, Betty, Heather and Martha. Never to be forgotten, but never to be put before the importance of the present.

Her philosophy professor would shit himself if he could hear her now. Then again, so would most people.

**Author's Note:**

> Veronica struggling with her new status as den-mother to a bunch of ex-outsiders sort of snuck it way into the Betty/Veronica I was writing. Really hope you like, happy Yuletide!


End file.
